Dollars

My eyes narrowed in reproach even as I continued to berate myself. “You have to decide, Min—Minnie Mouse.”

I coughed, swallowed, took another drink of water. My father’s nickname sent more tears plopping against the sink. My voice wobbled from sadness as well as ill practice. “Run. Find a way to escape—”

Another cough stopped me short. Hot pain overwhelmed me, and as much as I wanted to continue talking, my body was not ready.

Locking eyes to the mirrored reflection, my forehead furrowed with concentration.

Escape, Tasmin. Go home…even if there is no home to return to. Do whatever it takes. Or decide if you want him to keep you. The world is not safe out there. You saw first-hand how Elder steals and that man buys pleasure. Perhaps you were never meant to live amongst normal. Perhaps there is no more normal.

My fingertips pressed against the mirror. This isn’t so bad, is it? Sure, he’ll make you do things, sexual things, but he’s proven to be human beneath his monster.

I couldn’t look deep enough inside myself to find answers. I didn’t know what I wanted. But I did know I didn’t want to be sold.

Not now. Not ever.

Never again.

You know what you must do then.

I nodded at my reflection, dropping my fingers from the cool mirror and swiping at the streaks of salt on my cheeks. Each breath plugged up the holes inside with ideas and fears and wishes.

Swallowing, I muttered two words before embracing my silence once again. Two words solidifying my commitment to doing whatever was necessary to keep myself alive, no matter what world I stayed alive in.

“I know.”

Pushing off from the sink, I strode from the bathroom before I could change my mind.

I HEARD HER before I saw her.

The gentle breathing of determination sneaking on silent feet.

My muscles locked.

I’d deliberately kept my distance for three days, taking my issues out on Selix in the ring and swimming in the ocean.

I was exhausted. Not just physically but mentally, too.

Pim had dragged me back to a time when things were perfect. She’d reminded me of how I was before the catastrophe and showed me just how much I’d changed. The boy in my past would’ve taken her anywhere she wanted the moment I’d rescued her. I would’ve given her money to survive and professional help to thrive. Everything I’d stolen up to that point would’ve been shared because I knew what it was like to have no one.

I was no longer that boy.

I was a man who’d spent the last seventy-two hours obsessing over which choice was the lesser of two evils: keep her and destroy myself, or sell her and destroy whatever was left inside her.

Freeing her was not an option—not because I hadn’t been able to track down her mother—even though I’d tried again to trace her number—but because I hadn’t finished what I needed to do before my past came to light and I was incarcerated for life.

I didn’t know Pim’s name. I didn’t have an accent to go off, skin colouring to hint, habits to trace. I had no idea where she came from. She wrote to No One, but she was no one. Alone in the vast world of sin.

Wait…that’s wrong.

My fists clenched as my world imploded, crushing me with a new thought.

She’s not No One.

…I am.

For years, I’d been adrift. I’d been forgotten, shunned, unwanted. I had no one to call my own, no home, no love. No one knew my true name (apart from three people). No one knew who I was anymore—including myself.

I was the epitome of no one and nothing.

Christ, had she been writing to me the entire time?

Goosebumps snarled over my flesh that it wasn’t Alrik and his desire to build an armoured yacht that’d brought me to her, but her notes to No One—all along addressed to me.

The determined footstep came again, smashing my stampeding thoughts into a singular one.

Her.

I stopped breathing.

Stepping into the moonlight, Pim moved with a white sheet haloed around her. She’d tied the ends behind her neck, creating a loose toga that turned her from human girl to Grecian goddess.

Every part of me stiffened.

Fuck.

How did she get even more beautiful in three days?

My sea-droplet covered chest warmed until I was sure I’d steam with heat. My heart, already darting wildly from my prior conclusion of being her No One, increased its tempo until I grew lightheaded with need.

Intensity arrowed down my belly, feeding my cock in a rush of lust.

My wet boxer-briefs couldn’t hide my reaction as I thickened and lengthened with how gracefully and brave she moved.

What are you up to, Pim?

Why did you have to seek me out now, when I’m so fucking close to breaking every rule and claiming you?

If I was a better man, I’d command her to go—to turn around and return to her rooms, far away from me. But I wasn’t a man.

I was No One and as our eyes met, I fell completely under her spell. I did my best to slow my pulse from my late night swim.

It didn’t work.

My heart decided it wouldn’t calm, not now she’d bewitched me with her immortal strength and fragile hope and the way her damn eyes dove into mine. Not now I felt tethered to her in a way I never thought I would again.

Tension poured into being, waking around our ankles, getting thicker the longer we stared.

Pim stood there silently judging, waiting, watching.

I should put her on the helicopter and drop her off at the nearest police station. Fuck my past. I had the Phantom. I could outrun the law for long enough.